Seagate 7200.11 drives 1TB & 1.5TB any other suckers out there?

[InfidelSerf]

Ok I have been a fan of Seagate drives for sometime now.
I have 4 500GB drives 2 1TB drives and recently purchased an additional 2 1.5TBdrives
The second 1.5TB was to back up the contents of the first one I bought before I RMA it
Both have severe clicking sounds coming from them. 
Now one of the 1TB drives is clicking too. And both 1.5TB drives make excessive clicking sounds.

The 500GB drives have ran fine. 
So now I have nearly 5TB of data that I am in fear of loosing.
I have them all off hoping I can afford some new drives to salvage the data before I burn it all off to dvds

So what is a person with TBs of data to do?
I have over 2 sterlite 18gal tubs full of 50 and 100disc spindles of dvds burned with data.
When are petabyte crystals going to be perfected and marketed
Has anyone else experienced issues with these new Seagate drives?

And what make of 1TB plus drives would you buy?

[Harold Tuttle]

once you hit the terrabite level,
you should be looking at a RAID with a gang of 250s

DROBOs are cool

[never_retreat]

Western Digital all the way here. Every seagate drive I ever owned died.
I have some small 4gb WD's that are still turning right alongside the newer .5 gigers.
I have almost everything in raid. Raid used to be expensive but with the prices of disks in the last 5 years its not anymore.

[Monkeyleg]

My used machine came with a 160 GB Seagate drive that was noisy. I replaced it with a 500 GB Seagate drive that was as noisy as the original. To back up the new drive I bought another, and it's noisy as well. I think that the Seagates are just noisy. At least I hope so.

[RocketMan]

Terabyte class Seagates have...issues, from what I hear.  Though most of them are supposed to be resolvable through firmware updates.  Somehow, I don't believe you are going to be fixing the "click of death" through firmware updates, however.
The RAID suggestions made sense.  External enclosures for RAID boxes are pretty cheap these days.

[Vodka7]

I've had multiple WD's, IBM's, Maxtors, and Seagates die on me.  All of them were, at one point, heavily heralded as the best drives out there.

Hard drives just aren't built to last forever, and builders go in and out of vogue.  Good back up policies are always the best defense.

[Thor]

If I remember correctly, Seagate drives have ALWAYS been somewhat noisy. At least as far back as '96. Just because they click doesn't mean that they're defective. I've also heard of some reliability issues about them. I prefer Western Digital or Maxtor drives, myself.

[AJ Dual]

The quality/price-point zeitgeist seems to shift and move amongst the major drive makers every few years, IMO. And any real opinons we have on drive quality are meaningless without hard independant numbers on percentage failure rates of total units sold for a particular model and MBTF's.

However, WD's, at least anecdotally, seem to have the longest running reputation of having the fewest lemons out there in the drive world. I don't ever remember, all the way back to the '90's, of WD having a big "scandal", etc.

[Nick1911]

+10 million for raid.

[InfidelSerf]

I agree with the notion that the top brand drive is a fluctuating feeling.

I have had several RAID configurations on previous servers.  I admit I've been lazy and tight on budget the past few years
Thus the reason I would just buy a large drive and fill it up then buy another and fill it up.  All while burning data off onto dvd.

I have an old Promise RAID card but it's IDE, so I know I need to invest in a good SATA RAID card.
I am married now though, 2 years this Nov.  so the tech budget is strictly controlled :p

I saw the Drobo mentioned.. I've read a little on it any real world experience here?

[lee n. field]

I prefer Western Digital or Maxtor drives, myself.

!  Over time, last decade or so, Quantum and Maxtor have been towards the bottom of the heap, reliability wise, in my experience.

Well, it at least it's not Samsung.

and builders go in and out of vogue.

Hard disk makes I remember, but the youngsters among you may not: Microscience, Kalok, Lapine.  And who can forget Micrapolis?  Icky, icky, icky -- not good memories of Micropolis.

[RocketMan]

Lee, I'm sure you remember Conner hard drives.  What utter pieces of junk they were.  Bought out by Seagate a few years ago, IIRC.

I've got a pdf of a comprehensive study done at Google a few years ago, surveying over a hundred thousand hard drives, regarding long term reliability and failure rates.  They authors of the study came up with well defined data as to which manufacturer's drives were the most reliable.  They refused to actually name names in the report, however, for fear of being sued.

[dvlhntr]

Lurked for a while, but for some reason this thread made me register so I could
reply. (sorry in advance for the length of post)
/soap box::on/
RAID only increases availability of data on the array. Raid is not a replacement for a backup scheme.

/soap box::off/

veloce851, gotta ask - where are you buying these drives from, and how are they being shipped? that is an abnormal lot of drive failures for one user with that few drives. I would keep RMA'ing drives that don't sound right.
 
I have an Areca 1130 hosting a 10 drive raid5 and a 3ware 9650SE with only 4 drive raid10 on my two most used home machines.

There is no really awesome way to handle TBs of data for backup as a home user on the cheap. even harder when the data isn't static.


with all of that said, with 4-5TB of data that you want to archive you need to figure out something that will work for you.


if the data is static and your looking to drop most of it off in a safety deposit box at a bank or something I would give tape a serious look. (good buys on used but still very high quality enterprise stuff can be had) and tape is good for to archive on for years, where as HDDs 10 years later after never being powered on..... not so much

 If your data is a little more dynamic or you want faster access than going to the safe box I would start looking at a SOHO NAS if you want the simple route (although not the cheapest)

as for drive makers, I have owned/used plenty from all the majors. All will fail given enough use and time. I have had the best luck with ones that were shipped properly. (aka not newegg oem drives shipped free floating in a box of foam peanuts.) I do however usually try and stick with WD or seagate for my home stuff.


there are a lot of things to keep in mind if you do go with a real hardware raid card setup.
-with a good number of disks in a raid setup, if one starts to fail another is probably soon to follow. this is how many people loose all their data on their raid - another drive fails/hickups during the array rebuild and presto everything is gone. hot spares help offset this some as the rebuild can start sooner, but with some cards and enough drives a rebulid can take many many hours (if not days) and your entire raid volume is probably nakked during this time *(more fault tolerant raid levels not with standing) .
-try hard to not mix and match drives, frimware versions, ...etc on a raid volume.
-don't use desktop edition drives with real raid cards. use raid edition ones (you want TLER/ERC/CCTL with a real raid card and SATA drives) .

 
  I think that covers the basics, would love to hear what route you go with.

[AJ Dual]

I think ALL of the above underscores the massive market need for a stable, archive quality high capacity optical solution.

Even Blu-Ray data disks only hold 50GB. So you're still looking at an unweildy 20 disks to back up 1TB... And just a family photo collection, with digicam video can start approaching that. And Blu-Ray isn't really very amenable to multi-layer formats, because the blue/violet laser diode chemistry is only amenable to one particular wavelength.

And even if the industry hits the holy grail, the tuneable diode, it'll probably be in the red or IR spectrum, meaning that pit/bit size on the disks is going to be pushed back to the CD-ROM/DVD size.

Tape? Yuck. Even if it's just for direct backup of an entire system, non random access is just... meh.

3D holographic and optical cube memory that is accessed and lays data on X, Y, and Z axes shows some promise, but nothing's been marketable for years. (I remember reading about 1TB per cm^3 back in the 90's, but nothing yet...

[dvlhntr]

I think ALL of the above underscores the massive market need for a stable, archive quality high capacity optical solution.

There are it's called UDO.

it's just not cost effective at this time, but if you are really interested have the cash -> http://www.plasmon.com/  but this is enterprise grade stuff, and it comes with the price to match. I have a contact whom I *think* is still with plasmon (even tho they are pretty much defunct IIRC) if you want I could shoot him your contact info.


Honestly I like my RAID Arrays for quick access , LTO3 is fine (cost effective) for a lot of people for backups that sit off site. I wasn't saying tape should be used for accessing the data all the time, just G-F-S backup scheme at a reasonable interval that if the raid at home goes tits up - you can fall back to the tape and not lose the family pictures. 


obviously only u know what you want to afford and what performance your are willing to accept.

[lee n. field]

this is how many people loose all their data on their raid - another drive fails/hickups during the array rebuild and presto everything is gone.

Yup.  And if they don't notice one has failed, when the second goes, POOF!

Had one once.  4 dries in a RAID 10 array.  Two drives had failed.  The exact two they could lose and not lose data.

[Gewehr98]

I use RAID and JBOD.

When I say JBOD, I mean identical partitions co-located amongst the 5 computers in the house, plus my 5 SnapServers.

My rationale?

Although hard drives (the spinning platter types) are destined to fail within 3-5 years, what are my chances that ALL of them will do so at the same time?   

[dvlhntr]

Although hard drives (the spinning platter types) are destined to fail within 3-5 years, what are my chances that ALL of them will do so at the same time?

probably not that good for yours given that would see uneven use and I would bet they are of different types, sizes, manufacture lots, ...etc

the trouble with many a raid setup is the drives are probably bought at the same time, see the same amount of use, and are subjected to the same treatment (environmental). this only a problem when they are near EOL. which is just one reason why raid != backup.


that its a common occurrence for the same kind of drives to fail around the same time after the same usage is when one thinks about it is actually pretty impressive. Their manufacturing control is so tight that there is little varation in life of use between disks that see similar events during their life. if only I could find that kind of consistency with other products. 

hows your dual Xeon rig(s) working out?

[lee n. field]

where as HDDs 10 years later after never being powered on..... not so much

For real long term storage, write it on vellum and store it in a monastery in Syria.